Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1887-05-12
ARTIFICIAL FOOD.

The Startling Theory Advanced by One of
the Foremost Savants of the Age.
1t is pleasant to turn from these wars
and rumors of wars and preparation
for fighting to some of the comtem-
plated victories of peace and science.
The Siemens are a famous family of
German savants who have made impor-
tant discoveries in several departments
OF scientific research. One of the
brothers invented the process of stor-
ing electricity. The possibilities of
this invention are incalculable. We
are only beginning to dimly realize its
Importance. DIR. Siemen, another
brother, has written work in which
he boldly states that we are on the eve
OF the production of food by scientific
methods, without depending on plant
or animal reproduction and growth.
he says that chemistry, in con-
junction with electro-technics, will
some day teach man to make
the food he now obtains from the earth
by combination of the elements of
which such food consists, and which
nature supplies everywhere in the ut
most abundance. In other words; sci
ence, he thinks, may at some future
time lay the Malthusian specter of
over-population and diminishing re-
turns from the soil. Another sugges-
ton is that the recent achievements of
science, with the aid of mechanical art,
upon the field of applied electricity,
will restore to labor the relative indie
pendence from capital it enjoyed be-
fore the command of machine power
by the latter rendered competition of
the individual wage-worker with me-
chanical production impossible. They
will also restore, he thinks, the greater
exercise of individual intelligence in
labor, in place of the mere mechanical
performance compelled by the present
organization of industrial production.
He does not define his meaning in
detail on this point, but it is evident,
from his other public expressions on
this favorite subject, that he expects
those results to be accomplished by
the great cheapening of mechanical
power, through its general distribution,
among the masses of workers. by cleo
tricity, so that they can free them
selves from the advantage capital has
now over them by its exclusive COM
mand of expensive machine-power.
What vista this opens up before us!
Ii the chemist can take the elements of
the earth about us and produce whole
some and palatable food, at very
trifiing cost-how changed will be the
whole life of man on this planeti Pow
erty will be abolished. The surface of
the globe can then become one vast
city. There would be no more
Strengthening of animals for food, nor
toilsome labor in the wheat and corn
fields All this may seem visionary;
but suppose an old Grecian or
Roman was told that some day
men would travel in safety at the rate
of sixty miles an hour; that immense
ships would pillow through the ocean at
twenty miles an hour, regardless of
still, that message could be flashed
under the ocean and an answer be re-
turned in few moments. The citizen
of the ancient world would have said
his informant was a lunatic; that such
things would be prodigies that man
could never hope to accomplish. The
telephone, through which people can
keep up conversation hundreds of
miles apart, would have seemed still
more incredible to those who lived in
pre-scientifc age. The possibilities of
scientific discovery are simply meal
culable.- Monthly.